This invention relates to circuitry for electronically controlling the rejection of glassware produced by any of individual ones of identical manufacturing machines in response to a manual input from an operator or automatically following a specified operation on an individual one of such machines.
The glassware manufacturing industry is moving from mechanically operated and controlled glassware manufacturing machines to electronically controlled and electrically operated machines.
Mylchreest and Wythe in U.S. Pat. No. 3,877,915 show an electronic control system for a glassware molding machine including a control program for operating sequentially in any predetermined order the individual glassware producing sections of the machine.
William J. Croughwell in U.S. Pat. Nos. Re. 29,188 (3,905,793) shows an improved computer control for a glassware molding machine. This circuit includes means for updating the computer control program, a circuit for starting and stopping cyclic control, and a circuit for event selection.
Peters, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,162,909, Forkas et al., 4,145,205, and Forkas et al., 4,145,204, show detection and pulse generation circuitry for use with control circuitry in glassware molding machinery.
Iacovazzi et al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,767,374, and Dowling et al., 4,152,134 each show circuits used in the rejection of glassware produced from an I.S. machine.
The Iacovazzi apparatus rejects malformed bottles coming from a particular individual section and deposited in a sequential order on a common conveyor.
A selector panel is connected with the sequential timer operated in synchronism with the operation of the multi-section machine. This selector panel has a plurality of manually operated switches corresponding respectively with each of the individual sections. When a particular mold is malfunctioning, the corresponding switch on the selector panel is actuated and electrical timing signals from the sequential timer cause the ejector mechanism to remove each article produced by the malfunctioning section.
The Iacovazzi circuit includes merely a delay circuit portion and a selection switch portion.
The Dowling apparatus is an add function implemented by the main computer, a commercial unit used in multiplexed fashion to control the operation of multi-section I.S. Machine. This apparatus includes a circuit connection from the supervisory computer to a bottle reject control panel and bottle reject station. An operator designates bottles to be rejected, by section and mold, and number of machine cycles. The supervisory computer receives this information from the control panel to generate control signals to the reject station when the multi-section machine reaches the corresponding position in the machine cycle. The supervisory computer of Dowling is a commercially available general purpose unit supplied by Digital Equipment Corporation and designated as an LSI-11 computer.
The simple Iacovazzi circuit lacks versatility and the capacity to handle various circumstances. The Dowling circuit depends upon the central commercially available computer to handle all logical and circuit functions. If this Dowling computer malfunctions, or if it is overloaded either as to its input/output interface or as to its data transfer speed or arithmetic unit, the glassware rejection function will be degraded or disrupted. This could allow "bad" glassware to get through and defeat the purpose of the rejection function.
Emhart Machinery offers for sale an electronic "524" hotware selector which permits an operator to select ware to discard continuously from any cavity or section of a glassware molding machine. The selector comprises a plurality of identical selection switches located in front of each section, each switch comprising a bank of selector buttons, one for each cavity of a multi-cavity section. An operator manually selects ware to be rejected by pushing one of the buttons. A timing pulse generator is mounted on the conveyor carrying ware from the I.S. machine output to drive the circuitry.
An object of the present invention is to provide a separate control circuit for rejecting glassware from a multi-section I.S. machine and for handling a variety of such rejection circumstances.
A second object of the present invention is to provide such a circuit being dedicated solely to the rejecting of the glassware and which functions independently of the central control computer or other controller circuits for an integrated electronic glassware manufacturing installation.
A further object is to provide such dedicated circuitry with reliable and dependable response irrespective of the operation of the other control circuitry of the glassware manufacturing installation.